


Blood and Interludes

by argle_fraster



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-01
Updated: 2008-01-01
Packaged: 2017-12-06 07:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argle_fraster/pseuds/argle_fraster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is odd, the way they have transitioned to the silent companionship- odd, but not unwelcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood and Interludes

He’d seen his fair share of violence before, and caused a larger chunk than he cared to think about, but he’d never had to do anything as gut-wrenching as pull Heero Yuy’s lifeless body out of Heavyarms’ clenched hand.He thought the other pilot was dead- after all, how was it possible he’d survived the explosion? He was completely shocked at the heartbeat- faint, very faint, but still there- when he finally got the comatose pilot free of the mobile suit.

The ugly trail of red that followed him to his trailer as he half-dragged, half-carried Heero was one of the things he chose not to look at, and when he finally got the other pilot lying down on the sheets he realized that he had his work cut out for him.It felt like ages as he tried to dab enough blood away to reveal the injuries, and even then there were so many that every time he finished sewing one up, it seemed there were three new ones to take its place.

And it wasn’t even the blood that was the problem.It was Heero’s left arm, the part he deliberately left until last, where the bones were so shattered from debris impact (how the appendage hadn’t completely been severed, he didn’t know, and upon closer inspection, it really almost had) that they felt like pebbles rolling around in a thin membrane of skin.Feeling the shards jumble and bunch under his touch made his stomach roll, and halfway through attempting to re-construct as best he could, he had to stumble out of the trailer to retch into the bushes just outside.

By the time he was through cleaning and mending as best he could, because after all, his skills were rather limited when it came to _fixing_ the violence, the sky was streaked with the red hues of dawn, and it painted an ugly parallel to the blood staining the sheets.His bed was completely ruined, and his clothing was literally dripping as he moved to the bathroom, and he didn’t even bother to strip it off before getting into the hot shower stream.He just sat down in the tub and let his head fall against the porcelain behind him.

He wasn’t sure which thought was worse- the voice that was telling him _it could have been you, it could have been you_ , or the part that was screaming _it should have been you, it should have been you._

\-----

It was strange, not knowing whether his rudimentary efforts to save Heero Yuy’s life would actually work, and he found himself unsure of which scenario would be for the best.He hadn’t received any orders since the bluff with the colonies, and, in all honesty, he wasn’t surprised by it.

If Heero lived, then they were no better off than when they started. And if he died- well, they still weren’t any better off.

\-----

There were reports of the Gundams in the news, of course, and he could hear whispers every time a large group of Oz soldiers visited the circus performance, and he spent a long time just sitting next to the bed where Heero lay.Against the white sheets (it had taken hours just to clean up the area around the bed, and the sheets had been so far gone that he’d had no choice save to simply burn them), Heero looked unhealthily pale, dark bangs clinging lifelessly to his forehead.Trowa felt guilty leaving him, fearing he could die at any moment, and he felt guilty just sitting next to the bed, because it felt oddly intimate, and he thought he was toeing the invisible line.

So he sat there, caught between two extremes and unwilling to accept either, and sometimes Catherine would bring him food, and occasionally he would have to leave to give his performance in the act.He took to sleeping hunched over the bed, because strangely enough, the steady, if shallow, breathing of the comatose form was comforting.

\-----

After what felt like an eternity but was really just over twenty-four days, Heero woke up.

Trowa _did_ feel guilty then, because he hadn’t even been in the trailer at the time (the manager had been insisting on extra meetings to discuss new acts and performance techniques that were, in all actuality, little more than listening to himself talk more) and he knew how disoriented Heero must have been when he opened his eyes to see the stark whiteness of the trailer walls, and the sling rather shoddily constructed over his left arm and shoulder.He walked into the trailer and stopped, seeing blue eyes focus on him.

There was a quick flash of apprehension, and then his eyes settled over Trowa’s form and- there.There was the settling of realization and acceptance.

“Where am I?” Heero asked, and Trowa had to be impressed by the practicality of the question.No inquiries over who he was (though Trowa suspected given Heero’s other abilities, that he probably already knew) and no suspecting of the motives.

“A traveling circus,” Trowa replied, hoping his voice didn’t belay his nerves.“I hide out here.”

There was a moment of silence, and Trowa watched as the oddly intense cobalt eyes roamed across the room, silently taking in the details.

“You should have let me die.”The statement was flat and emotionless, and it didn’t even surprise Trowa.He had figured as much- anyone willing to go that far for their orders had to be willing to accept the consequences, and in a way he not only respected it but envied it.He had no such convictions, no such devotion, and seeing it in another Gundam pilot made him feel inadequate.

“Maybe,” Trowa answered, because it was the easiest response to give.“Maybe I should take a page out of your book.”

“I’ll give you this advice then,” Heero said, focusing on Trowa again.“Dying hurts like hell.”

It was such an absurd statement that Trowa couldn’t help but _laugh_ , really laugh, and with a pang he wondered when the last time he’d laughed like that was.Surely it had been before Heavyarms, before Trowa Barton, before the Alliance.It was hardly a momentous occasion, but it rang true somewhere inside him, and he appreciated it, even if Heero was clueless to its importance.

\-----

They fell into an easy rhythm, watching the news on the television when they felt out of touch with the rest of the world.They didn’t talk about the others: Heero didn’t speak of Duo save to name him, and Trowa didn’t mention anything about Quatre or Wufei, and they didn’t touch on Heero’s self-destruction or the lack of orders since the disaster with the colonies.They could go hours without speaking and it didn’t feel uncomfortable- Heero understood the desire for silence, and Trowa appreciated it.

The first time Heero tried to raise his left arm, Trowa reached over and grabbed his good hand, trying to stop the motion before it happened, and though Heero did stop, the grimace of pain on his face belayed the sting he must have felt from the small action alone.Heero didn’t ask about the injury, or what had happened, but he looked a bit pale for the rest of the day, and he must have known just how bad it had been when he’d first arrived.

It took another hot shower to get the memories of the crushed bones out of Trowa’s mind.

\------

Since Heero had been in the bed for so long, Trowa had gotten used to sleeping on the couch, and the odd kinks in his neck when he woke in the morning didn’t even register anymore. Heero must have felt guilty about it, because one night as Trowa was pulling the blanket off the back of the couch, there was a hand on his arm, stopping him.

“Don’t,” the other pilot said, in his strange way of being both blunt and detached.“I’ll take the couch tonight.”

“You can’t sleep on it with that arm,” Trowa pointed out.“You’re still not fully healed.”

There was a moment of quiet, and he thought he could almost see the gears working in Heero’s head, and after a minute he nodded tersely.He seemed angry to have to accept it, but he climbed into the bed anyway, and Trowa lay down in his usual position on the somewhat lumpy couch cushions.

\----

The next night, Heero did it again, and he didn’t back down, and Trowa found himself in his bed for the first time in a month.He didn’t like knowing that Heero was on his side with his bad shoulder, but the sheets were far too comfortable to argue with, and he drifted off before he could think better of the idea.

After awhile, they started switching off each night, because they were both to stubborn to relinquish the couch completely, and at least that way they were even.

\----

For some reason, he’d really thought that self-detonating would be a good idea.He didn’t know if it was because he felt like he was floundering without orders or a purpose in the fight, or if he was envious of the freedom Heero had found when he’d pushed that button, or if it was something else entirely that he wasn’t prepared to accept yet, but it had seemed- final.Real.

And then afterwards, when they were sitting in the truck, Heavyarms concealed as best they could with tarps in the back, he hadn’t known that guilt could _sting_ so badly.Despite Catherine’s emotional display, he didn’t feel bad about leaving the circus behind, because he felt as if he wasn’t truly leaving anything there.It was an odd feeling, and it made him vaguely uncomfortable, so he shifted his hand on the steering wheel.

“That girl’s tears stopped me,” he said, unsure as to why.“If you were in my place, you still would have gone through with it.Maybe now you see why I admire you.”

“I told you before,” Heero said, eyes flashing, “there’s nothing wrong with acting on your emotions.”

Trowa thought maybe there was more implied than he was ready to admit to in that statement, and it rang too true to be comforting.

“Let’s go,” he said instead, and when Heero turned back to the window, Trowa thought he might have looked deflated.

“Yeah.”

\------

Heero always wore an odd look when he said “thank you”, like he wasn’t used to ever uttering those words, and it only intensified as they moved from place to place, carrying the gun that Heero insisted on giving to the family members he was contacting.

\-----

It was strange moving around so much, and Trowa had thought it would affect him more when they were forced to sleep in the truck the first time they hadn’t been able to find lodging.They tilted the seats back and pulled linen, thread-bare blankets Trowa had thought to pack over themselves, and it was odd the way he’d adjusted so quickly to having Heero’s steady breathing nearby.

He didn’t want to admit that he’d honestly slept _better_ in the truck than in the cheap motels, and he knew it was unfair to push what had become comforting to him onto the other pilot, but Heero didn’t seem to care when Trowa suggested that the next night they do the same thing (because, after all, they would conserve funds and make it easier to leave should they be found).And then it became habit to sleep there, and neither one volunteered another option.

\-----

He was surprised when Noin managed to track them down in the alleyway, because he’d thought that they were doing a better job at concealing themselves than that, and he was concerned that he’d underestimated Oz’s leaders.He was disinclined to trust her at all, but Heero did, and since he never figured Heero to be the trusting type anyway, he thought perhaps he should just go with it.

\-----

The shuttle was small, and Noin showed them to the small bunks with a flourish of her hand.

“We’ll be able to offer you better accommodations once we reach the base,” she said, and Trowa knew neither of them would complain, for it was the first time they’d seen real beds in weeks.

They went to the hangar, which was small and didn’t allow them much room to move Heavyarms around while Heero was getting the hang of the controls, but it was enough, anyway, and Trowa sat patiently on the outside of the cockpit while the other pilot went through the systems one by one.It didn’t seem odd to let Heero use the Gundam, even though he’d never let anyone else touch it since he’d acquired it, and the thought was more than a little unsettling.He pushed it aside and tried to concentrate instead on giving Heero all the information he’d need on Heavyarms’ various quirks.

“Has the left arm been automatically adjusted to account for the extra weight?” Heero asked, grimacing slightly as he pulled on the left joystick.

“No,” Trowa answered, “I left it that way intentionally to give myself a speed advantage in battle.”

He was close enough to see the small flash of appreciation in Heero’s eyes.

“That’s a smart move,” the other pilot replied, his voice neutral, and Trowa kept watch as he continued to strain his left arm.He wondered if the weight burden might be a handicap.

He wondered why he was so at ease with Heero using his mobile suit.

\-----

The first night on the shuttle, he couldn’t sleep at all.It was too quiet in the steel walls, and he was too closed off from everything else.It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the lieutenant- because he didn’t, but he knew that wasn’t the reason he was unable to rest, and he tossed and turned until the others started stirring enough to alert him to the morning’s presence.He had survived on less sleep before, in much harsher conditions, and doing it again would not prove to be a large hindrance, but he disliked the feeling of perpetual grogginess a sleepless night always seemed to provide.

There were circles under Heero’s eyes, too.Noin didn’t say anything, and she largely let them be to work on Heavyarms again, but Trowa wondered if she hadn’t noticed as well.

Trowa managed to nod off the next night, and when he woke the next morning, he found himself strangely refreshed.He was confused until he noticed that Heero had moved to the bunk next to him, dark hair sticking out from behind the partition, his steady, even breathing audible through the steel.

\-------

“Let me off,” he insisted, growing impatient.“I will correct your mistakes.”

He couldn’t deny the buzzing fear in his ears that they would be discovered, and the cycle would be thrown into being again.He didn’t know if the bluff would work again the second time.The colonies were the first priority, and even if he had no orders, he had a mission to protect them.Dropping down from the shuttle, he felt the jolt of gravity take hold again, and thought it strange how long it had been since he’d been in such a position

The search party was good, but by no means skilled, and it took little effort to dispose of them.He could not suffer mistakes- they were too far that point.Each fault could easily cost him, or the colonies behind him, a life.He was surprised then, as Noin was shouting at him through the comlink, that the muscles in his arm had tensed to the point of locking, and he could barely get his fingers off of the joystick.He didn’t know when he had lost his ability to block out the fighting- was it after he’d spent a night putting a broken comrade back together, or after they’d lost sight of their orders?

He wasn’t sure it mattered, and as he fell out of Heavyarms’ cockpit, clutching his throbbing wrist, he was fairly sure it didn’t.

“I have a favor to ask,” he ground out, the sting of the wind painfully cold against his bare skin.“Reload the explosives for Heero Yuy.”

“Forget about that!” Noin yelled, and she sounded more concerned than upset.“You better think about what your next move is, kid.”

She was right, of course, but his head was swimming too badly with cloudy hazes of pain to plan anything out at that moment, and his hand was beginning to pulse with his heartbeat.For the first time since the bluff with the colonies, he felt truly lost.

When he got back in the shuttle, Heero didn’t say anything, and Trowa was glad, and he sat in the hangar, legs dangling over the side, feeling slightly better as long as he stayed near Heavyarms.Heero sat next to him and wrapped his wrist and arm, and it seemed a poetic reversal of their roles.

\-------

There was something incredibly off-setting about the base Noin took them to, something in the atmosphere.Zechs was polite without being courteous, and the mechanics were neutral, and Trowa had been surprised to see Heero’s Gundam rebuilt in so short a time.He wanted to believe their intentions, and he wanted to understand the desire Zechs felt to continue his duel with Heero, but he knew, more than ever, their presence within an Oz facility compromised their defense of the colonies.He kept his guard up and his senses on full alert, and felt uncomfortable leaving Heero alone in the hangar to continue modifications on Heavyarms.

And then, even after he’d sent Heero to get some rest, his body refused to do the same until he’d finished hiding the beam saber under Heavyarms’ left gatling gun.He couldn’t really think about why- because then he would have to accept a large number of things he was unable to fully process- and he knew it was the right thing to do. He knew enough, he knew _Heero_ well enough, to realize that it was what the other pilot would have wanted.

For some reason, that seemed important.

When he finally made his way out of hangar, the bright fluorescent lights fading behind him as he wearily rubbed his eyes, he stopped when he realized that they were no longer on the shuttle, and they were no longer sleeping in soldier’s traveling bunks.The rooms at the base were separate, private, and full of dreamless nights, but he knew Heero was asleep, and he didn’t want to disturb him.He just made his way to his room and collapsed on the bed sheets.

He slept fitfully at best, and sometime during the night he heard the door open a crack.He moved instantly for the gun he wasn’t wearing, a habitual motion that it took seconds to realize he was even doing, and then Heero dumped a pillow and blanket onto the floor, soothing his screaming nerves again.He didn’t question it, and neither said anything, and Trowa found it worked better that way.

He slept well after that.

Noin woke them the next morning, and he couldn’t read the expression on her features.He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

When Heero left the control room to make his way to the hangar bay, Trowa didn’t stop him, but he did go with him and stood next to him as they stared up at the faces of the Gundams held motionless within the confines.And as they stood there, Heero shifted his weight, and their shoulders touched just slightly, like a brief caress.It wasn’t much- but it seemed to be enough to steady the other pilot, and he walked resolutely towards Heavyarms with his good hand balled into a fist.

And Trowa watched the fight from the control room, and wondered why he was suddenly so nervous about Heero dying.


End file.
